It’s very much alive, the art form of opera. Contemporary music theatre fills the theatres, like grand opera for a large audience.

The art form of opera is very much alive. Contemporary music theatre fills the theatres, like grand opera for a large audience. Miroslav Srnka’s double opera South Pole tells the story of the famous race between two men to reach the South Pole – and their bitter fight for “eternal” fame in the eternal ice – as an up-to-date theatrical drama about people’s hubris. After two runs of performances at the Bayerische Staatsoper Munich, the work now receives a new production at the Staatstheater Darmstadt, directed by the company’s artistic director Karsten Wiegand. And Srnka’s chamber opera Make No Noise is also on its travels: it receives its first Czech performance at the Biennial Ostrava Days in September with the production from the Bregenz Festival, and will be performed in Prague next year.

In his latest opera Orest, Manfred Trojahn interprets the classical subject matter of matricide as the psychograph of a broken man after his action, who ultimately frees himself from the heteronomy. As culprit and victim he remains a psychologically highly charged figure to the present day. Trojahn’s Orest received a highly-acclaimed new interpretation by Hans Neuenfels at the Zurich Opera in February. The first production of the opera in Amsterdam was chosen as “Premiere of the Year, 2012” by Opernwelt magazine. This production was revived in Hanover, and there was a new production in Vienna. “If you missed it, it’s your own fault”, said the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, leading the chorus of enthusiastic press reviews. Hans Neuenfels and his team, Georg Nigl in the title role and the ensemble of singers as interpreters of this “outstanding work of most recent operatic history”, shaped a “triumph of all those involved” in this “successful update of a well-known theatrical subject” (Neue Zürcher Zeitung). And another work by Manfred Trojahn received a successful new interpretation: Limonen aus Sizilien at the Vienna Volksoper. The “Drei italienischen Geschichten” after Luigi Pirandello and Eduardo de Filippo were unanimously positively received.

And yet it does move. Opera is a slow medium, for composers and librettists work on a piece for many years: topicality is barely possible here. And yet the authors look at a subject through the lens of their own time, and its realisation can give a clue to its social or even its political relevance. This is demonstrated by the heated discussion about Andrea Lorenzo Scartazzini’s new opera. Edward II, after a story by Christopher Marlowe and a libretto by Thomas Jonigk, triggered some extreme controversies in a production by Christof Loy at the Deutsche Oper Berlin in mid-February. The plot about a homosexual king was staged by Loy with powerfully full-blooded visually overwhelming references to gay clichées. In the media, enthusiastic acclaim contrasted with unanimous disapproval, but the work was successful with audiences. A snide commend in the ZEIT resulted in a flood of readers’ letters. Der Tagesspiegel found the opera “wild, mighty, gripping … enthralling, powerful music theatre which reaches beyond the stage, sucks the audience into a whirlpool of images and sounds, opens up associations, seduces, scares.” The Neue Zürcher Zeitung took a similar view: “Very colourful, with powerful images, the music is dense … but it never drowns out the vocal parts. It shadows the loneliness of the King (Michael Nagy), his brokenness as a haunted outsider. But even the figures in his circle ... they each display their own aura.”
All news is good news for an art form which has been declared dead. Opera is dead, long live opera!

Editors
(from [t]akte 1/2017)